This chapter presents findings on the social-emotional skills of five-year-olds in the United States. It shows the differences in social-emotional scores across multiple subgroups of children, considering their individual and family characteristics, as well as their home learning environments. This is based on a direct assessment of children’s skills and reports from the children’s parents and educators.
Early Learning and Child Well-being in the United States
Chapter 5. Results of the social-emotional skills assessment in the United States
Abstract
The importance of social-emotional skills
Children develop their capacity to experience and express emotions starting in early infancy, at the same time as they grow physically and cognitively in developing their language and problem-solving skills (Thompson, 2001[1]). Recent developments in neuroscience have shown that the same neural circuits involved in the regulation of emotions overlap with those associated with cognitive processing (Bush, Luu and Posner, 2000[2]; Davidson et al., 2002[3]; Posner and Rothbart, 2000[4]).
Emotions can support cognitive development when they are well-regulated, but interfere when they are not. For instance, children who do not feel in control of their emotions are more prone to outbursts, inattention and rapid retreats from stressful situations, (Garber and Dodge, 1991[5]). Children’s beliefs and their neural mechanisms of attention are interrelated components during childhood development (Schroder et al., 2017[6]).
Early social-emotional skills are strong predictors of later health, educational, social and labour-market outcomes
The ability to understand emotions is a unique, concurrent predictor of academic competence (Leerkes et al., 2008[7]). Early prosocial behaviour at age eight is shown to be as important as early cognitive ability in predicting educational attainment at age 30 (Schoon et al., 2015[8]), as well as in shaping attainment in adolescence and adulthood (Caprara et al., 2000[9]). Social-emotional skills developed during childhood are linked to educational achievement, even after controlling for early literacy and numeracy skills (Duncan et al., 2007[10]). For example, children’s early skills in identifying and responding empathetically to others’ emotions have been found to predict concept knowledge and language competence, even after controlling for age, gender and parental income level (Rhoades et al., 2011[11]; Garner and Waajid, 2008[12]).
Underdeveloped skills in identifying others’ emotions in early adolescence predict increases in fear, decreases in positive emotions and decreases in the quality and quantity of social support. Amongst boys, low emotion identification skills also predict increases in sadness (Ciarrochi, Heaven and Supavadeeprasit, 2008[13]).
Early empathy, trust and prosocial behaviours are associated with social justice beliefs and a lower likelihood of involvement in crime and delinquency in adulthood (Schoon et al., 2015[8]). Low empathy is associated with antisocial and delinquent behaviours, and increased risk of psychopathology as adults (Fontaine et al., 2011[14]). Sympathy and moral reasoning among 6- to 9-year-olds are associated with social justice values at age 12 (Daniel et al., 2014[15]).
Children’s emotional health is the strongest predictor of adult life satisfaction at all ages, even more than family economic resources, family psychosocial resources and children’s cognitive ability (Flèche, Lekfuangfu and Clark, 2019[16]). Early emotional well-being is linked with mental health in later life, and emotional difficulties at age five are predictors of midlife psychological disorders, such as anxiety and depression (Buchanan, Flouri and Brinke, 2002[17]; Rutter, Kim-Cohen and Maughan, 2006[18]).
IELS included a direct measure of children’s emotion identification and attribution, and indirect measures of children’s prosocial behaviour, trust in familiar people and non-disruptive behaviour
The International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS) provides a direct and indirect assessment of social-emotional skills (Box 5.1). Parents and educators responded to survey questions about the child’s prosocial behaviour, trust and disruptive behaviours. Children in the study participated in an interactive tablet-based assessment of their empathy skills in a one-on-one setting with a trained study administrator. Reports from educators and parents helped to create a more accurate picture of their children’s early social-emotional skills in both home and early childhood education and care (ECEC) environments than could be ascertained from the direct assessment alone.
Measuring empathy in IELS entails the assessment of two skills: emotion identification and emotion attribution in response to a story about a set of characters. Children who participated in the IELS direct assessment responded to hypothetical (story) scenarios designed to measure their empathy skills. Narrated stimulus stories (narrated) presented cartoon-like children in brief vignettes presented on electronic tablets. The empathy measure required the child to identify an emotion using emoticons representing happy, sad, afraid, angry and surprised. The emotion identification scores reflected children’s ability to recognise the emotions of others (i.e. how did the story character feel?). The emotion attribution scores reflected the interaction of concordant emotional response (i.e. when child’s responses matched the emotion of the story character) and his or her own emotion attribution (i.e. how the child felt and why s/he felt that way in response to the story).
IELS also measured prosocial, trust and non-disruptive behaviours indirectly through reports from parents and educators, with parents and educators rating the same children on the same set of behaviours. The items for assessing prosocial behaviour and non-disruptive behaviour were based on the Adaptive Social Behaviour Inventory (Hogan, Scott and Bauer, 1992[19]), while those for trust were developed based on previous research (Baumrind, 1968[20]; Roberts, Strayer and Denham, 2014[21]). The prosocial behaviour measure is composed of items such as the child “understands others’ feelings, such as when they are happy, sad or angry”. The non-disruptive behaviour measure was composed of items such as the child “fights with other children”, which was positively inverted for easier interpretation (i.e. the higher the scores the less disruptive). Lastly, the trust measure is composed of items such as the child “approaches familiar adults for comfort when upset”.
This chapter compares educators’ and parents’ ratings of children’s behaviours related to their social-emotional skills. Parents undoubtedly have a better knowledge of their child in a wider set of situations, while educators have a larger reference group for comparison, but children may also behave differently in different environments.
Educators’ ratings of children’s behaviours were more closely related to the direct assessment of social-emotional skills and their scores were aggregated into a single score for prosocial behaviour, trust and non-disruptive behaviour, and scaled together with the rest of the study’s outcomes. Educators’ indirect assessments are, therefore, internationally standardised with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100, and comparable with the scores from other subdomains of the children’s direct assessment.
Box 5.1. Defining social-emotional learning
Social-emotional learning is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions; set and achieve positive goals; feel and show empathy for and towards others; establish and maintain positive relationships; and make responsible decisions (CASEL, 2015[22]; Wessberg et al., 2015[23]).
Social-emotional development is the continuous process of learning social-emotional skills. Similar to other skills, such as mathematics, reading or science, developing these skills early on and continuing throughout adulthood is important for their effect on personal, academic and life outcomes over time.
Social-emotional skills are individual characteristics that 1) link biological predispositions and environmental factors; 2) are expressed through consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours; 3) develop through formal and informal learning experiences; and 4) influence important socio-economic outcomes throughout life (De Fruyt and Wille, 2015[24]). The term is increasingly prevalent in policy discussions that emphasise improving these skills through learning. Other terms such as “21st century skills”, “non-cognitive skills”, “employability skills” and “personality characteristics” often refer to the same concept. For further discussion about their overlaps and differences, see Abrahams et al. (2019[25]) and Kankaraš and Suarez-Alvarez (2019[26]).
IELS measures of social-emotional skills are interrelated
An important component of prosocial behaviour and getting along with others is being able to recognise and understand the emotions of others (Strayer, 1987[27]; Strayer, 1993[28]). Both emotion identification and emotion attribution act, therefore, as precursors to engaging in prosocial behaviour in response to another person’s emotional state (Hinnant and O’Brien, 2007[29]). At the same time, it is important to note that prosocial behaviour goes one-step further as it also includes the expression of positive social behaviours, for example, the child “tries to comfort others when they are upset”.
The central aspect of trust in IELS is the child’s expectations that others will be supportive, responsive and kind (Bowlby, 1983[30]). Children develop their first relationships with adults, peers and friends in early childhood. When these first relationships become consistent, predictable and responsive to their needs, children are more likely to develop secure attachments that help them to acquire and reinforce their trust in known people and themselves (Bowlby, 1983[30]). It is important to clarify that trust does not mean that children are indiscriminately developing secure attachments with anybody without judgement, but that they develop trust because of frequent and repetitive patterns with close adults. Reassuring expressions from caregivers (which nurture a child’s secure attachment) can support children to continue to play comfortably, while anxious expressions (which nurture a child’s insecure attachments) might interfere in children’s trust and playful interactions and, ultimately, hamper their development (Baldwin and Moses, 1996[31]). Mistrustful children might be overly wary or fearful of peers or adults; a child might be reluctant to engage with others, or be needy and dependent since s/he does not trust others to be responsive and supportive. As shown in this chapter, children’s trust isassociated with adaptive social behaviour, such as the expression of prosocial and non-disruptive behaviour.
Social-emotional skills of five-year-olds in the united states
The average five-year-old child in the United States is less able to recognise emotions than children in Estonia
When presented with a range of stories and situations, children in the United States were less able to accurately identify the feelings of the characters in these stories than children in Estonia but had similar abilities to children in England. However, children in the United States appear to have similar skills in emotion attribution as children in England and Estonia. The mean score among five-year-olds in the United States for emotion identification was 493 points, which is similar to England (497) and significantly lower than Estonia (511). In emotion attribution, where the score reflects children’s own emotions, children in the United States scored similarly to children in England and Estonia.
According to their educators, children in the United States had similar ratings for prosocial behaviour as children in England (494 compared to 495 in England), but significantly lower than children in Estonia (511). However, educators in the United States rated children as significantly less disruptive than in Estonia (515 compared to 470) and similar to children in England (514). Educators in the three countries participating in the study all rated children’s levels of trust similarly.
The distributions of social-emotional scores in the United States are shown in Figure 5.1.
Figure 5.1. Distribution of social-emotional learning scores, United States
Note: Graphs produced using the first plausible values. For more information on the use of plausible values in the study, please consult the IELS Technical Report.
Social-emotional learning scores are interrelated for both direct and indirect assessments
Table 5.1 shows the correlation coefficients between the social-emotional skills measured as part of IELS for the United States. For the direct assessment, the scores for emotion identification and emotion attribution were strongly correlated (r = .59). For the indirect assessment (educators and parents), the association between trust and non-disruptive behaviour was moderately strong, as was the association between prosocial behaviour and non-disruptive behaviour. The strongest association was between educators’ ratings of prosocial behaviour and trust. As expected, these results are similar to the overall correlations across participating countries in IELS.
Table 5.1. Correlations between the social-emotional skills in each type of assessment, United States
Note: This table shows the correlation coefficients between the social-emotional skills in the United States (using child weights). The values in parentheses are the overall values across participating countries in IELS (senate weighted).
The association between the direct assessment of children and educators’ indirect assessment is moderately strong. The direct assessment provides children’s emotion identification and emotion attribution, while the indirect assessment provided educators’ ratings on children’s prosocial behaviour, trust, and non-disruptive behaviour. Examples of prosocial behaviour include “the child understands other’s feelings” and “the child tries to comfort others when they are upset”. While the first statement is closely associated with the tasks in the direct assessment, the second statement includes a positive behaviour. Examples of trust include the child “approaches familiar adults for comfort when upset” and disruptive behaviour the child “fights with other children”. Although such behaviour still relates to the tasks presented in the direct assessment, they are slightly more distal behaviours from emotion identification and emotion attribution than prosocial behaviour.
On the other hand, the association between educators and parents’ indirect assessments is moderate while the association between parents’ ratings and the direct assessment of children’s social and emotional is weak. As previously mentioned, it is important to highlight that these domains are conceptually overlapping, but not exactly the same.
Parents give more positive ratings of their children’s empathy skills than educators but both rate children’s emotional control similarly
In addition to the direct assessment of emotion identification and emotion attribution, parents and educators also rated children’s development in empathy (e.g. the child is considerate, helpful, caring) and emotional control (e.g. the child controls emotions, waits patiently for something he or she wants). Parents were more likely to rate children’s empathy skills as more developed than educators (Figure 5.2). However, both parents and educators rated children’s emotional control similarly. Parents in England and Estonia also rated children’s empathy skills as more developed than educators.
Figure 5.2. Social-emotional development as reported by parents and educators, United States
Note: The figure compares the same children as rated by their educators and parents.
Individual characteristics and early social-emotional skills
While girls typically have better social-emotional scores than boys, the gender gaps are narrower in the United States than in Estonia or England
Figure 5.3 shows that, on average, girls had higher social-emotional scores than boys for emotion identification, emotion attribution, prosocial behaviour, trust and non-disruptive behaviour. Educators reported larger gender differences in prosocial behaviour and non-disruptive behaviour than those found in the direct assessment. The differences in scores between boys and girls were statistically significant for both the direct and indirect assessment. The gender gap in the United States is significantly smaller than in Estonia in prosocial behaviour and trust, and significantly smaller than in England in emotion attribution. However, the gender gap in the United States is not significantly smaller than in Estonia in emotion identification, emotion attribution, and non-disruptive behaviour and in emotion attribution, prosocial behaviour, trust, or than in non-disruptive behaviour in England.
Figure 5.3. Social-emotional scores by gender, United States
Note: The gender differences in mean scores are statistically significant.
Both parents and educators reported girls as having more developed empathy and emotional control than boys (Figure 5.4). This difference also existed in Estonia and England. Parents were also more likely than educators to rate children’s empathy skills as better developed regardless of their gender.
Figure 5.4. Social-emotional development as reported by parents and educators by gender, United States
Note: The figure is comparing the same children rated by their educators and parents.
The gender gap is larger among children in the bottom socio-economic quartile of socio-economic background than those in the top quartile
Figure 5.5 shows the differences between girls’ and boys’ scores by their families’ socio-economic status (SES)1, comparing the top and bottom SES quartiles. On average, girls still had better social-emotional learning scores than boys across both quartiles, but the gender gap was larger for children in the bottom quartile for emotion identification, prosocial behaviour and non-disruptive behaviour. For example, the gender gap in emotion identification skills was 52 points in the bottom quartile but was not statistically significant in the top quartile. Likewise, for prosocial behaviour, there was a gender gap of 35 points in the bottom quartile while in the top quartile the gap was not statistically significant.
Figure 5.5. Social-emotional scores by socio-economic quartile and gender, United States
Note: Bottom refers to the bottom quartile of socioeconomic-status and top to the top quartile of socioeconomic status. Statistically significant differences are shown in a darker tone. The figure only includes scores when at least one of the comparisons was statistically significant.
The direct assessment also showed significant gender gaps in the second SES quartile, while there were significant gender gaps in the second and third SES quartiles for educators’ assessment of prosocial behaviour, and in the third SES quartile for assessments of trust and non-disruptive behaviour.
Children’s social-emotional skills scores increase slightly with age
Figure 5.8 shows children’s social-emotional learning scores by their age in months at the time of the assessment. In the United States, the average difference between the oldest and youngest children was 92 points for emotion identification and 55 points for emotion attribution. This means, for every additional month in age, children’s emotion identification scores increased by 6 points on average and their emotion attribution scores by 4 points. The data indicate a small but significant positive correlation between children’s ages and their scores on the direct assessment of their social-emotional learning. In the United States, the correlation was 0.22 for emotion identification and 0.13 for emotion attribution. Differences by age were smaller in educator indirect assessment ratings: the correlation was significant for prosocial behaviour and not statistically significant for trust and a non-disruptive behaviour. The data show similar correlations between age and social-emotional learning outcomes for boys and girls.
Figure 5.6. Social-emotional scores by age of child in months, United States
Social, emotional or behavioural difficulties are more strongly associated with lower social-emotional learning outcomes, especially more disruptive behaviour, than low birth weight or premature birth and learning difficulties
IELS asked parents whether their children had a low birth weight or premature birth; learning difficulties; or social, emotional or behavioural difficulties.
The primary cause of low birth weight is often premature birth (i.e. born before 37 weeks gestation) and it can be, though is not always, associated with early learning difficulties. In the United States, parents reported 10% of children as having had a low birth weight or premature birth (<5lbs, 8oz), similar to the share in England (11%) and Estonia (8%). Learning difficulties (e.g. speech or language delay, or intellectual disability) affected 13% of children whose parents provided data, 3 percentage points higher than in the other two participating countries. Social, emotional or behavioural difficulties affected 12% of children whose parents provided data in the United States, compared to 10% in Estonia and 8% in England.
In the United States, boys were more likely to be identified by their parents as having learning difficulties (17% of boys and 10% of girls) or social, emotional or behavioural difficulties (16% of boys and 8% of girls). However, the data showed no significant gender differences in social-emotional learning scores between children with and without these difficulties, after accounting for socio-economic status.
Overall in the United States, 27% of five-year-olds for whom information was available had experienced at least one of these challenges or difficulties, with 20% having experienced just one, 6% having experienced two and 1% having experienced all three.
Children who had experienced learning difficulties had a lower mean emotion identification score and were rated as having lower prosocial behaviour and trust by their educators than children who had not (Figure 5.7). Children with social, emotional or behavioural difficulties had lower social-emotional learning scores on both the direct and the indirect assessment, and lower scores than children with learning difficulties. When all of these challenges are analysed together, social, emotional and behavioural difficulties were more highly associated with poor social-emotional learning outcomes than low birth weight/premature birth or learning difficulties. As might be expected – since these difficulties include behavioural difficulties – this was particularly the case for disruptive behaviour. These associations were significant after controlling for socio-economic status. In contrast, children with learning difficulties were assessed as no more disruptive than children without learning difficulties.
Figure 5.7. Relative associations between early difficulties and social-emotional scores, United States
Score-point differences between children who have and have not experienced an early difficulty, after accounting for the effects of other early difficulties, and before and after accounting for socio-economic status
Note: Statistically significant differences are shown in a darker tone.
When analysed alone, children with a low birth weight or who had been born prematurely had lower emotion identification skills and lower trust as reported by educators than other children. However, these differences disappeared when controlling for learning and social-emotional difficulties.
Home and family characteristics and early social-emotional skills
Children from advantaged backgrounds have higher social-emotional scores than those from less advantaged backgrounds
Figure 5.8 shows the difference in social-emotional learning scores between children from the top and bottom quartiles of the national socio-economic status (SES) index. IELS defines children from an advantaged socio-economic background as those who are located in the top quartile of the index, while children from a disadvantaged background are defined as those belonging to the bottom quartile. The results show that children from advantaged backgrounds had higher social-emotional scores than children from disadvantaged backgrounds in both the direct and the indirect assessments.
Figure 5.8. Social-emotional scores by socio-economic background, United States
Note: The differences in the mean scores of children in the bottom and top quartiles of socio-economic status are statistically significant.
Nevertheless, the strength of the relationship varied depending on the skill examined. The direct assessment found that socio-economic status had a significant relationship with emotion identification and emotion attribution. According to educators’ assessments, children from advantaged backgrounds also had higher prosocial behaviour and trust than those from less advantaged backgrounds. However, socio-economic status had no relationship with children’s disruptive behaviour.
There are no statistically significant differences in social-emotional learning scores along racial and ethnic lines
In the United States, the children were reported as White (52%), Black (11%), Hispanic (25%), Asian (7%), American Indian or Alaska Native (1%), Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (<1%) and those of two or more races (4%). The IELS results found no statistically significant differences between children from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and nor did these results differ between boys and girls, or after controlling for socio-economic status.
Educators report less disruptive behaviour among children with parents who primarily speak a language other than English at home
IELS asked parents whether English was the language most often spoken at home. In the United States, around 20% of the children for whom information was provided had at least one parent who primarily spoke a language other than English at home; this was 4% higher than in England and 14% higher than the share of children in Estonia whose parents did not speak Estonian or Russian at home. Figure 5.9 shows the score-point difference in social-emotional scores between children with parents who most often speak a different language at home and those who do not. Educators reported less disruptive behaviour in children with parents who primarily spoke another language at home, and the difference was statistically significant after controlling for socio-economic status. Educators also reported lower trust in those children but the differences become non-significant after controlling for socio-economic status. The direct assessment showed no significant differences for this group of children.
Figure 5.9. Social-emotional scores by home language before and after accounting for socio-economic status, United States
Score-point differences between children with at least one parent who speaks a language other than English at home and children with parent(s) who mainly speak English at home
Note: Statistically significant differences are shown in a darker tone.
Children’s immigration background is not associated with different social-emotional learning scores after controlling for home language
In the United States, 18% of the children for whom information was provided had an immigrant background; this is the same as in England and much higher than in Estonia (2%). IELS defines an immigrant background as having both parents – or the sole parent if a single parent – born in another country or economy than where the study took place. Educators in the United States reported lower trust and less disruptive behaviour among children with an immigrant background after accounting for socio-economic status, but the differences disappeared when the results were also controlled for home language. These results suggest that children’s immigration background was not related to their social-emotional learning scores.
Children whose mothers have completed higher education have higher social-emotional scores
In the United States, 39% of the five-year-olds in the study had mothers who had completed higher education (i.e. a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, professional degree or doctorate), which was similar to the share in England (40%) but lower than in Estonia (53%). Figure 5.10 shows the score-point difference in social-emotional learning scores between children whose mothers had completed higher education and those who had not. Children whose mothers had completed higher education were rated as displaying more prosocial behaviour and trust and less disruptive behaviour as well as higher emotion identification and emotion attribution than children whose mothers had not completed higher education. However, these differences only remained significant with respect to prosocial behaviour and trust after accounting for household income.
Figure 5.10. Social-emotional scores by mother’s educational attainment, United States
Score-point differences between children whose mothers hold a bachelor’s or higher degree and those whose mothers do not, before and after for accounting for household income
Note: Statistically significant differences are shown in a darker tone.
Children in single-parent households generally have similar social-emotional skills to those in two-parent households
In the United States, 15% of the children for whom the information was provided were in single-parent households, the same share as in England and a larger share than in Estonia (12%). Children’s social-emotional skills in single-parent households were not significantly different to children in two-parent households after accounting for socio-economic background. However, children in single-parent households had more disruptive behavior (21 points) according to their educators than children in two-parent households after accounting for socio-economic background.
The results relating to the number of siblings a child has are equivocal
In the United States, 14% of the children had no siblings, 39% had one sibling, 26% had two, 11% had three, 5% had four and around 5% had more than four siblings. The most common number of siblings among the participating countries was one. Children in the United States had more siblings on average than in the other two countries; 20% of children had three or more siblings compared to only 12% in England and 8% in Estonia. Children with one sibling scored significantly higher (18 points) for emotion attribution than children with two siblings, after accounting for socio-economic status. However, the results for the other social-emotional sub-domains were not conclusive.
There were clearer patterns in England and Estonia. For example, children without siblings were reported by educators as having higher disruptive behaviour than children with one or more siblings. This result was not found in the United States, after controlling for socio-economic status.
Home learning environment and early social-emotional skills
The number of books children have access to at home is positively related to their social-emotional skills
In the United States, 12% of children lived in households with access to 10 or fewer children’s books – including those from a school or public library – 17% in homes with 11-25 books, 23% in homes with 26-50 books, 22% in homes with 51-100 books and 26% in homes with more than 100 children’s books. On average, children in the United States had access to a greater number of children’s books than in Estonia (where the most common number was 26-50 books) and a little lower than in England. Children from homes with more books had, on average, higher social-emotional learning scores on the direct assessment. The difference in children’s emotion identification and emotion attribution scores between those with more than 100 children’s books at home and those with 11-25 was significant, after controlling for socio-economic status (Figure 5.11).
Figure 5.11. Social-emotional scores by number of books in the home, United States
After accounting for socio-economic status
The indirect assessment yielded similar findings. Educators reported significantly higher prosocial behaviour and trust among children from homes with more than 100 books than those from homes with 11-25 books after accounting for SES. The positive association of having a greater number of books at home did not significantly differ by gender in the direct assessment and the data did not show a consistent gap.
Children who regularly role-play with their parents are more empathetic and have more prosocial behaviours than children who do it less than once a week
In the United States, 4% of the parents participating in IELS reported never role-playing with their children (defined as imaginative or pretend play such as playing the role of a chef or a shopkeeper), 12% did it less than once a week, 26% one or two days a week, 28% 3-4 days a week and 30% 5-7 days a week. The percentage of parents in the United States who frequently engaged in role-play with their children was higher than in Estonia and England (around 60% role-played at least 3 days a week in the United States, compared with 50% in England and 30% in Estonia). Children who role-played regularly with their parents were more empathetic and had more developed prosocial behaviours according to educators than those who did it less than once a week (Figure 5.12). These results remained significant after controlling for socio-economic status. The positive association for role-playing with parents did not significantly differ by gender after accounting for SES.
Figure 5.12. Social-emotional scores by frequency of role-play with parents, United States
After accounting for socio-economic status
Children whose parents read to them frequently are better able to recognise emotions and are less disruptive
In the United States, 7% of the parents reported reading books to their child less than once a week, 20% one or two days a week, 32% on 3-4 days a week, and 43% on 5-7 days a week. The percentage of parents who read to their child 5-7 times a week was around 5 percentage points lower in Estonia but 17 percentage points higher in England. The direct assessment found that children in the United States whose parents read to them most often were better able to recognise and understand emotions (Figure 5.13).
Figure 5.13. Social-emotional scores by frequency of being read to by parents, United States
After accounting for socio-economic status
Children who regularly attend activities outside the home have stronger prosocial behaviour and trust and are less disruptive than other children
In the United States, 27% of parents reported that their children never attended special or paid for activities outside the home, 20% reported their child attended less than once a week, 36% one or two days a week, 14% 3-4 days a week, and 4% 5-7 days a week. Examples of special activities included sports clubs, and dance, swimming and language lessons. The share of children who attended such activities once or twice a week was around 4 percentage points higher in Estonia and 11 percentage points higher in England. In the United States, educators reported that children who attended such activities one or two days a week showed stronger prosocial behaviour and trust and were less disruptive according than children who never attended such activies, after accounting for socio-economic status (Figure 5.14). At the same time, children who attended such activities one or two days a week had higher emotion identification and less disruptive behaviour than those who did so between 5 and 7 days a week.
Figure 5.14. Social-emotional scores by engagement in special or paid activities outside the home, United States
After accounting for socio-economic status
Children who regularly have back-and-forth conversations about how they feel are more empathetic
In the United States, less than 2% of parents reported never having back-and-forth conversations with their children about how they feel, 4% reported doing so less than once a week, 13% one or two days a week, 23% 3-4 days a week and 59% 5-7 days a week. These percentages were similar in England and Estonia. The data found that children who had the most frequent back-and-forth conversations about how they felt scored higher for both emotion identification and emotion attribution than those who did so less often, after accounting for socio-economic status (Figure 5.15).
Figure 5.15. Social-emotional scores by frequency of back-and-forth conversations about feelings with parents, United States
After accounting for socio-economic status
Children whose parents are moderately or strongly involved in their schooling, have higher average social-emotional learning scores
In the United States, 65% of children had parents who were moderately or strongly involved in school activities, according to their teachers, which was lower than in England (69%) and Estonia (80%). Examples of activities included class parties, school concerts or plays, parents’ evenings and parental workshops. Figure 5.16 shows the difference in social-emotional learning scores between children whose parents were more and less involved. Children whose parents were moderately or strongly involved in school were rated as having better social-emotional skills, even after accounting for socio-economic status. However, these differences were not statistically significant for children’s direct assessment scores.
Figure 5.16. Social-emotional scores by parental involvement in school activities, United States
Score-point differences between children whose parents are moderately or strongly involved in activities at school and those whose parents are slightly or not involved, according to their teachers, before and after accounting for socio-economic status
Note: The differences are statistically significant.
The positive relationship between parental involvement and children’s social-emotional scores did not significantly differ by gender.
Children who use digital devices weekly but not daily are better able to recognise emotions than those who use them more frequently
In the United States, 5% of the children never or hardly ever used a desktop or laptop computer, tablet device or a smartphone, 7% used them at least once a month (but not every week), 40% used them at least once a week, and 49% used them every day. In England and Estonia, the share of children who used these digital devices every day was around 10% lower. Children who used such devices weekly but not daily were better able to recognise emotions than those who used them every day, never or at least once a month (Figure 5.17). There were no differences in the effects of technology use between boys and girls, or between those using them every day and those using them monthly or never.2
Figure 5.17. Social-emotional scores by use of digital devices, United States
After accounting for socio-economic status
Early childhood education and care and early social-emotional skills
Overall, attending early childhood education and care before the age of five has no significant relation to children’s early social-emotional learning scores
In the United States, 80% of the children had attended early childhood education and care (ISCED 01 or ISCED 02) before the age of five, a smaller share than in England and Estonia. As discussed in the previous chapters, attendance varied significantly by socio-economic status, but did not vary significantly by gender or racial or ethnic group.
At an aggregate level, there were no clear relationships between participation in ECEC and children’s social-emotional scores. This was regardless of whether children attended part-time or full-time. However, there were some negative relationships with social-emotional skills when comparing children who did not attend ECEC before the age of five and those who first attended before the age of three.
Early social-emotional skills and emergent cognitive development
Children’s social-emotional skills are associated with their emergent literacy and numeracy skills after accounting for socio-economic status.
Many studies have shown that social-emotional skills are significant predictors of students’ academic performance in areas such as maths and reading, after accounting for socio-economic status (Suárez-Álvarez, Fernández-Alonso and Muñiz, 2014[32]; Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2008[33]). Although previous research has typically looked at students attending primary, secondary and higher education, recent evidence from neuroscience suggests emotion and cognition are interrelated during early infancy (Bush, Luu and Posner, 2000[2]; Davidson et al., 2002[3]; Posner and Rothbart, 2000[4]).
Figure 5.18 shows the variation in IELS emergent literacy and emergent numeracy scores explained by social-emotional scores, after accounting for socio-economic status. The first bar presents the percentage of variation in numeracy explained by educators’ indirect assessment of children’s social-emotional skills (prosocial behaviour, trust and non-disruptive behaviour) after accounting for socio-economic background. The second shows the association with the direct assessment of children social-emotional skills (emotion identification and emotion attribution). The third shows the combined effect of the direct and indirect assessments together. While the measurement of the domains in the second column shared the same assessment method – tablet-based stories and games – the first bar used educator assessments as an independent method. Therefore, the percentages in the first and third bars serve as a proxy of the minimum and maximum variation associated with social-emotional skills regardless of the assessment method.
Figure 5.18. Percentage of the variation in emergent literacy and numeracy scores explained by social-emotional skills and socio-economic status, United States
Note: SEL = social-emotional learning. The green bar shows the percentage of variation in each IELS outcome explained by socio-economic status. The orange bars show the additional variance explained when social-emotional skills (indirectly assessed, directly assessed or both combined) are introduced to a regression model already containing socio-economic status.
The data shows that social-emotional scores were associated with emergent literacy, numeracy scores, and self-regulation scores. Children’s social-emotional scores, together with their socio-economic status, explained between 20% and 46% of the variation in the emergent literacy scores in the United States. More importantly, social-emotional skills explained between 7% and 33% of emergent literacy scores after accounting for socio-economic status.
Figure 5.19 shows the percentage of variation in self-regulation scores (for mental flexibility, inhibition and working memory) explained by social-emotional scores after accounting for socio-economic status. As in the previous figure, the bars represent the different measures of social-emotional skills based on indirect assessment from educators’ reports, the direct assessment and the combined effect of both. Children’s social-emotional scores together with socio-economic status explained between 10% and 27% of the variation in working memory scores in the United States and between 5% and 22% of the emergent working memory scores after accounting for socio-economic status. Despite sharing the same assessment method, the association between inhibition and empathy skills is negligible. Importantly, educators also support the relation between emotion and cognition in the indirect assessment of social-emotional skills through an independent method. Indeed, educators’ indirect assessment still explained a significant amount of the variation in self-regulation scores after accounting for socio-economic status.
Figure 5.19. Percentage of the variation in self-regulation scores explained by social-emotional skills and socio-economic status, United States
Note: SEL = social-emotional learning. The green bar shows the percentage of variation in each IELS outcome explained by socio-economic status. The orange bars show the additional variance explained when social-emotional skills (indirectly assessed, directly assessed or both combined) are introduced to a regression model already containing socio-economic status.
In short, children rated by their educators as having higher levels of prosocial behaviour, trust, and non-disruptive behaviour had significantly higher emergent literacy, numeracy and working memory scores. Children who scored higher in the direct assessment of their empathy skills also had significantly higher scores in those domains.
Summary
The average five-year-old child in the United States was less able to accurately identify the feelings of characters in stories than children in Estonia, but performed similarly to children in England.
Children’s ability to recognise emotions is a precursor of their ability to empathise with others. Emotion attribution scores in IELS reflected their ability to recognise both emotions in others and their own emotions. Children in the United States scored similarly to children in England and Estonia on this measure.
Based on reports from their educators, children in the United States displayed significantly lower levels of prosocial behaviour than children in Estonia and similar levels to children in England. However, educators in the United States rated the children as significantly less disruptive than those in Estonia and about the same as in England. Educators in all three countries participating in the study rated children’s average levels of trust similarly.
Children’s social-emotional scores, for both the direct and indirect assessment, were predictors of their scores in the other aspects of the assessment even after accounting for socio-economic status. In the United States, children’s social-emotional scores accounted for 7% to 33% of their emergent literacy scores (compared to between 13% and 33% in England and between 5% and 27% in Estonia), between 7% and 22% of their numeracy scores (compared to between 12% and 28% in England and between 6% and 26% in Estonia), and between 5% and 22% of their working memory scores (compared to between 7% and 18% in England and between 4% and 11% in Estonia), after accounting for socio-economic status.
The development of early skills are interrelated. Cognitive skills are a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to foster early social-emotional learning. For example, children need a minimum level of literacy skills to be able to adequately navigate socially; have rich interactions with peers, friends, and parents; and, ultimately, to open the door to social-emotional learning. However, having high levels of literacy does not always imply high social-emotional skills, and vice versa.
At the aggregate level, ECEC attendance before the age of five had no conclusive results for children’s early social-emotional learning scores. There were no clear relationships either between ECEC intensity – i.e. whether the child attended part time or full time – and social-emotional development. These equivocal findings may mean that children’s social and emotional skills develop more in the home than in education settings and/or that their development is dependent on the quality and approach of the ECEC setting, rather than children’s participation in itself.
Socio-economic background had a significant relationship with children’s social-emotional development in the United States. This relationship was even more pronounced in boys than in girls, increasing the gender differences in children from lower socio-economic backgrounds and with learning difficulties. However, children’s ethnic or racial background was not significantly associated with their social-emotional skills. Nor was a child’s immigration background if their parents spoke English at home. These results suggest that whether English was the primary language at home was more important than having an immigrant background.
After accounting for socio-economic background, children’s home and family learning environments remained a powerful predictor of their social-emotional scores. The following factors tended to be positively related to the social-emotional scores of five-year-olds in the United States: having a mother who completed higher education, having a large number of children’s books at home, moderate use of digital devices, regularly role-playing with their parents, parents who regularly read to them, regular back-and-forth conversations with parents about how they feel, attending special activities outside the home, as well as a high parental involvement in school activities.
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